Analyzing Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

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To really understand The Raven one must understand the creativity and sickness of the poet. Edgar Allen Poe had a drinking problem (as many already know) but he also had bipolar disease and / or split personality. Edgar Allen Poe wrote in this style because it was very popular at the time. He specialized in horror and terror because he discovered they were popular. Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Raven because his wife, Virginia, was dying of tuberculosis. To me I think the poem is about self torture and about being consumed by the past. The raven symbolizes the protagonist’s subconscious, trying to send him a message that pain and misery in which he has deluded himself into will never go away. It isn’t until nearly at the end of the poem that the…show more content…
Basically talking about his lost love, self-torture and about being consumed by his past. To me I think writing was Poe’s way of coping with his wife death ,because it provided him with his own insane characters with similar pain for him to deal with, as opposed to detraction from his own pain so that he could come with these much the same with his on life. The poem setting seems like it’s midnight in a dark room where the protagonist wife has past away and he is in a terrible sate of grief and misery and all he wants is to bring her back, but he can’t, and he knows this. Then with doubt and fear he locks himself up inside this dark room, filled with darkness and hopelessness in the middle of the night and while he’s alone by himself, he hears the raven who I thinks is his subconscious also death. He wants the raven to deliver Lenore to him or show him to her, but the raven only mocks him seems like and shows’ him how no one waits for you after death, you are all by yourself. The tone of the poem seems very depressing and melancholy. Death is very melancholy when experienced by anyone, especially a lover such as Edgar Allen Poe wife. Words like darkness, sorrow, sad, farewell and flirt represents death and love. This poem uses a lot of literary devices, such as alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme. The use of alliteration and rhymes such as “open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter.” (105) From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore.(10) “While I nodded, nearly napping”(3) All of these are good examples of alliteration because it gives good sources of repetition of consonant
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